Amazon in hotwater over stolen iPhone

An Apple fanboy is furious that after he ended up buying a stolen iPhone on Amazon.

Tweeter Ben Dreyfuss claimed that the iPhone he bought for his mother turned out to be hot and not in a good way. In fact he only discovered that the phone was nicked when his mum tried to activate the iPhone with Verizon, representatives of which informed her that it had been blacklisted.

Dreyfuss tweeted that the iPhone had been listed on Amazon's warehouse deals as refurbished. It appears that the phone came from an Amazon trade-in; in other words, someone likely stole the phone and sold it to Amazon. Amazon had instructed him to return it and was "very apologetic" but the question is how this got through the company’s checking system. If Verizon can spot that a phone is hot, why couldn’t Amazon?